International treaty to criminalize file sharing

[Modelworks]

I have to hand it to them, they really know how to sneak things by the public.
This was proposed in 2007.
http://ipjustice.org/wp/2008/0...white-paper-acta-2008/

In 2007 a select handful of the wealthiest countries began a treaty-making process to create a new global standard for intellectual property rights enforcement, the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA is spearheaded by the United States, the European Commission, Japan, and Switzerland ? those countries with the largest intellectual property industries. Other countries invited to participate in ACTA?s negotiation process are Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. Noticeably absent from ACTA?s negotiations are leaders from developing countries who hold national policy priorities that differ from the international intellectual property industry.

The USTR suggests ACTA is building a ?strong and modern legal framework? to ?bring pirates to justice?. But under a true justice system, someone isn?t a pirate until he or she has been convicted of wrongdoing. A ?strong and modern? justice system does not presume everyone is a criminal in order to justify violating due process of law protections, privacy rights, and freedom of expression guarantees.

Possible provisions to create a new legal framework under ACTA include:

i) Criminal enforcement ? criminalizing non-commercial infringements (lower the international legal standard since the existing standard under the TRIPS Agreement Article 61 provides criminal provisions against commercial infringements). Legal due process rights during criminal proceedings are on the chopping block with ACTA too.

Internet distribution and information technology ? focus on restricting Internet distribution of information including Peer-2-Peer (P2P) file-sharing, creating liability for search engines and other online service providers, requirements that ISPs police and control Internet content.

If this goes through it will no longer be the RIAA taking you to court, but the federal government.

It is up for vote in July.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Prop...trade_agreement_(2007)

The agreement covers the copying of information or ideas in a wide variety of contexts. For example page three, paragraph one is a "Pirate Bay killer" clause designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of unauthorized information exchange on the internet, which would also negatively affect transparency sites such as Wikileaks.

If adopted, a treaty of this form would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime, with new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers, including perfunctionary disclosure of customer information and a ban on anti-circumvention measures.

If you have not written your congressman before, you might want to make this a first.
Don't let them pull this BS.

 

[spidey07]

I love how people that steal and pirate will fight tooth and nail to say what they are doing is somehow OK. They will frame it as "it's my right", or "intellectual property should be shared".

Swiper, stop swiping.

 

[Throckmorton]

Write congressmen and say what?

 

[FDF12389]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton
Write congressmen and say what?

Thanks?

 

[Legendary]

It's called a slippery slope. We can't give rights away for reasons that are not of the utmost importance, otherwise they become less powerful and harder to protect.
Even if this issue doesn't affect you, the concept of this right will affect you at some point.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: spidey07
I love how people that steal and pirate will fight tooth and nail to say what they are doing is somehow OK. They will frame it as "it's my right", or "intellectual property should be shared".

Swiper, stop swiping.

You do not want the government to be the ones that decide what is unauthorized information.
Once that starts you are on a slippery slope downhill with a jetpack on your back .

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: spidey07
I love how people that steal and pirate will fight tooth and nail to say what they are doing is somehow OK. They will frame it as "it's my right", or "intellectual property should be shared".

Swiper, stop swiping.

You do not want the government to be the ones that decide what is unauthorized information.
Once that starts you are on a slippery slope downhill with a jetpack on your back .

I absolutely agree with the slippery slope. I just don't like trying to justify what is already illegal. The bill is dumb, but the idea behind it isn't. We've got to stop all this stealing.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I'm not for pirating, but this better not effect my ftp serving in any way!

 

[40Hands]

Originally posted by: spidey07
I love how people that steal and pirate will fight tooth and nail to say what they are doing is somehow OK. They will frame it as "it's my right", or "intellectual property should be shared".

Swiper, stop swiping.

A telcom shill would say something like that.

 

[Scarpozzi]

What irritates me about the RIAA is the fact that before the Internet, people made cassette tapes all the time. It's only been since the mp3 revolution that the record companies started making a big deal about it when people copied the media. In 1997, I had my hand in the cookie jar and had somewhere around 200 songs that I had downloaded over mIRC on dialup. Since then, I can't stand P2P and what it does to network infrastructure. It is basically like a virus for the bandwidth. I don't know too many folks that work in IT that would disagree....BitTorrent is one of the worst.

As for the computer distribution method, it's much more wide-spread and easier to track thanks to logging, etc... I agree with the concept that copies should be purchased (iTunes, etc) but think it should be the music industry that comes up with formats that can't be copied rather than putting the burden on the government to police (even though they say it's the ISP's responsibility). I don't want my tax dollars going to the courts for this B.S.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
I'm not for pirating, but this better not effect my ftp serving in any way!

It shouldn't, that is as long as you don't encrypt the transfer then they could say you are using anti-circumvention measures because they can't tell what you are transferring .

That part of it scares me more than any other.
Using something like a proxy to hide your ip could be seen as criminal.
They would probably liken it to using a fake id in person.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: spidey07
I love how people that steal and pirate will fight tooth and nail to say what they are doing is somehow OK. They will frame it as "it's my right", or "intellectual property should be shared".

Swiper, stop swiping.

You do not want the government to be the ones that decide what is unauthorized information.
Once that starts you are on a slippery slope downhill with a jetpack on your back .

I absolutely agree with the slippery slope. I just don't like trying to justify what is already illegal. The bill is dumb, but the idea behind it isn't. We've got to stop all this stealing.

GL with that

 

[Vehemence]

I'm still seeding my tentacle porn.

 

[BassBomb]

yay Canada

But more seriously, I have been finding it increasingly hard to download pirated games that I have just pretty well given up, and download demos and buy games that are ACTUALLY worth it.

I've got a PS3 right now anyways for the most part.

Most music I download anyways has no copyrights or anything to do with RIAA (US only?)

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: spidey07
I love how people that steal and pirate will fight tooth and nail to say what they are doing is somehow OK. They will frame it as "it's my right", or "intellectual property should be shared".

Swiper, stop swiping.

You do not want the government to be the ones that decide what is unauthorized information.
Once that starts you are on a slippery slope downhill with a jetpack on your back .

I absolutely agree with the slippery slope. I just don't like trying to justify what is already illegal. The bill is dumb, but the idea behind it isn't. We've got to stop all this stealing.

One of the really big problems is defining the verbage without seriously infringing on the right to host or transfer data/information that would not normally fall into the category of pirating. At the same time, that verbage needs to be general enough in order to encompass pretty much all possible methods of pirating so that those who support it do not find legal loophole methods to get around the law. In the end, there really is no way to do this properly in our ever changing internet world if the process is being regulated by the government like this bill intends to do. The only way to do it would be to constantly amend what we start off with in order to keep up with the changes which happen so quickly. There is no way anyone will be able to convince me that our government will keep up with that issue at the rapid pace which is necessary. Not to mention that this is supposed to be an international treaty so now you are talking about a large chunk of the world being required to keep up with that pace. It's not going to happen that way. Therefore, if they get involved like this, the end result will be one where the law is too generalized and many things which you would hope to not be effected by the law will be influenced by it all of the time.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
yay Canada

But more seriously, I have been finding it increasingly hard to download pirated games that I have just pretty well given up, and download demos and buy games that are ACTUALLY worth it.

I've got a PS3 right now anyways for the most part.

Most music I download anyways has no copyrights or anything to do with RIAA (US only?)

You do realize that this is a international treaty, of which Canada is a member.

 

[BassBomb]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: BassBomb
stuff

You do realize that this is a international treaty, of which Canada is a member.

The RIAA or the law in July?

The music I download has NO copywrites and is not from Canada or USA

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: BassBomb

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: BassBomb
stuff

You do realize that this is a international treaty, of which Canada is a member.

The RIAA or the law in July?

The music I download has NO copywrites and is not from Canada or USA

But the international treaty will affect Canada as well..

 

[ch33zw1z]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
I'm not for pirating, but this better not effect my ftp serving in any way!

It shouldn't, that is as long as you don't encrypt the transfer then they could say you are using anti-circumvention measures because they can't tell what you are transferring .

That part of it scares me more than any other.
Using something like a proxy to hide your ip could be seen as criminal.
They would probably liken it to using a fake id in person.

Exactly why I'm worried. I use my Secure FTP server to share photos, joke pictures, photochopped pics with friends and family. Why shouldn't I? I prefer to transfers to be secure, fuck 'em.

 

[BassBomb]

Ah gotcha. All it would do is make my ISP throttle me even more.

As stated again, this music is akin to recording from the radio (which is exactly what it is). It is recordings of radio from another country.

 

[destrekor]

The problem with this legislation, is it's going to negatively effect legal p2p filesharing. Personally, whenever a file provider offers the ability to use BitTorrent, I will almost always go with that. I've found that in most instances, I can achieve higher overall transfer speeds using P2P than using a single HTTP or FTP server, especially for popular and high traffic files, where the server is going to be dishing out slower speeds because of high traffic.
But, this kind of legislation will likely end up forcing ISPs to severely hamper P2P traffic, and since a good amount of it is illegal traffic, it will basically crush the legal uses as well.
This would be impeding on my rights... privacy would be done because now they would be snooping in my internet traffic, and I don't approve of that. Second would be the right to use my internet service how I wish, as long as its not breaking any laws. If I use BitTorrent for legal means, it should be completely legal. But you know this kind of legislation will harm P2P traffic.
The longer the internet is around, the more and more goverments want to go draconian and implement 1984-esque laws. I understand piracy is a concern, and a crime, but its a copyright crime, which to my knowledge has never been subject to law enforcement measures unless the copyright holder sought such action? I'm not even sure how I feel about that aspect changing, but that's not the offending part in my eyes, it's everything else I've mentioned.

+

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: destrekor
The problem with this legislation, is it's going to negatively effect legal p2p filesharing. Personally, whenever a file provider offers the ability to use BitTorrent, I will almost always go with that. I've found that in most instances, I can achieve higher overall transfer speeds using P2P than using a single HTTP or FTP server, especially for popular and high traffic files, where the server is going to be dishing out slower speeds because of high traffic.
But, this kind of legislation will likely end up forcing ISPs to severely hamper P2P traffic, and since a good amount of it is illegal traffic, it will basically crush the legal uses as well.
This would be impeding on my rights... privacy would be done because now they would be snooping in my internet traffic, and I don't approve of that. Second would be the right to use my internet service how I wish, as long as its not breaking any laws. If I use BitTorrent for legal means, it should be completely legal. But you know this kind of legislation will harm P2P traffic.
The longer the internet is around, the more and more goverments want to go draconian and implement 1984-esque laws. I understand piracy is a concern, and a crime, but its a copyright crime, which to my knowledge has never been subject to law enforcement measures unless the copyright holder sought such action? I'm not even sure how I feel about that aspect changing, but that's not the offending part in my eyes, it's everything else I've mentioned.

+

...and nor should it. Not when the only solution that really works involves the destruction of those kinds of freedoms. I'm sorry, but the freedoms at stake here are far more important than more effectively preventing pirating of copyright material. I am really surprised that there are those that believe otherwise. Especially when most of those people (excluding those execs who profit more from such things) wouldn't see any positive change to their lives if it did happen.

 

[rivan]

I just wrote my senators and my representative.

senate.gov
house.gov

For or against this or anything else, I urge everyone to do the same.

If you don't speak up, you can't expect to be represented.

 

[jonks]

Don't worry, we have international treaties banning torture and that doesn't stop us, so why sweat file sharing?

 

[Special K]

Weren't copyrights originally only supposed to give the artist/band 10 years of protection, at which point the song would enter the public domain?